by Jo Allen
At Tammy’s appearance, he turned his back on the grim scene, but he said nothing. He’d stopped at the line of blue tape that Tyrone Garner, the young police officer who was first on the scene had strung from tree to tree like a garland. Doddsy, who was more than twice Tyrone’s age and in love with him, shivered a little.
Tammy followed his gaze, allowed herself the tiniest shrug and began pulling her forensic gloves on. ‘I don’t imagine this is going to be anything other than a suicide, just like the others. But that’s not the point any more, is it? We’re all getting a bit jumpy now.’
‘It’s not surprising.’ Doddsy stepped back for fear of being accused of contaminating the scene, even though he was well outside it and knew exactly what to do. His relationship with Tammy, once close, had chilled once he’d started dating her son and these days he never quite knew how she was going to respond to him. Today she seemed more melancholy than terse. And why not? At the end of the day they both cared for the young man, both had his best interests at heart.
Just like Jude and Mikey, Doddsy reminded himself. Just like everyone who knew there were kids in the area killing themselves for no obvious reason. Just like every parent whose child was back late or out early and not answering messages, just like every young person who knew their mates were ridden with angst like teens and young adults always were and who, for the first time, saw something sinister in it.
‘Your lads need to get on top of it, Doddsy.’
He judged that to be a joke. Tammy knew they were doing everything they could, even though it must look as though they were falling short. And they were. Someone else had died. ‘Yeah. I’ll refer the matter up to my boss.’
Tammy pulled the hood of her forensic suit up over her short hair and stepped inside the tape. ‘I’ll get on.’
Doddsy stared at the scene for another second, then strayed away from it, back the way he’d come. A woman’s bicycle, its pale purple paintwork gleaming with dew in the early morning light, stood propped against the base of a tree just by the path. The scene looked for all the world like an arty photograph of a summer heaven, except that Tyrone had taped the bicycle off, too, and it was waiting for Tammy or one of her colleagues to check for anything incriminating about its position before it was carted off for further examination.
In his heart Doddsy knew there would be nothing. It would be exactly what it looked like — a suicide — but there were many triggers. Somewhere, there was an answer. He strode up the path, thinking of how the girl’s soft, sad footsteps must have passed that way before him, back up past Long Meg and her Daughters and along the lane to the New Agers’ camp. Their numbers blossomed in summer but now, with the return of the schools ten days or so before, they’d gone, except for a couple of middle aged women with a camper van. Ashleigh had run a routine check on them after Charlie’s death and they’d been absent when it had happened, photographing the Milky Way over Tewet Tarn and Castlerigg and producing some better-than-amateur images to prove it.
Now, he could see, they were packing their belongings. They’d be out of the place as soon as the interview process was over and only Storm and Raven, too long out of the world ever to want to go back into it, would be left to stick it out through the winter. When it was really cold there was always someone who’d offer them shelter, but both of them grew anxious indoors and preferred to take their chances. This might be one of the reasons why Raven was fading, shivering even in the September sun as she sat outside on her rickety chair, a blanket wrapped around her and a chipped mug of tea in her hand. As always, Storm hovered anxiously at her shoulder. There was a way between the primitive and the ultra-modern, and in Doddsy’s view, cutting yourself off from the benefits of the modern world along with its negativity wasn’t it. But he knew from experience there was nothing to be done for people so determined to live their lives their own way.
Before going into the field he stopped and checked his watch. It was almost seven thirty. Jude, who was on the verge of being a workaholic, would probably be in the office by now and although Doddsy had resisted calling him too early, it was legitimate to let him know. He called and got no answer, so let it go to voicemail. ‘Jude. There’s been another suicide up in Cave Wood.’ That was the second in the same place. Was that significant? ‘A young woman, late teens, early twenties maybe. No ID yet but we’ll get to it. Raven found her this morning.’ And could that be significant, too?
He waited for a second in case Jude had merely missed the call, but there was no reply. He must be driving. Thrusting the phone into his pocket, he opened the gate to the field. A short distance from Storm and Raven was a woman — head held high, blonde, shoulder-length hair corralled by an Alice band, stout walking boots stained with dried mud. She was swinging a dog leash in her hand and the Labrador to which it must have belonged was gambolling at the far end of the field.
Doddsy made his way over to the New Agers and read their different expressions — Storm’s of stoical resignation, Raven’s melancholy, the woman’s challenging. He recognised her from Jude’s description as Geri Foster, Storm and Raven’s daughter.
‘DI Dodd,’ he said, as if they didn’t already know. ‘I’m here to talk to you about what happened down in the woods.’
‘We don’t know anything about it,’ called one of the camper van women from across the field. ‘Raven found the poor girl.’
‘It’s bloody shocking,’ added the other. ‘You should be doing something about it.’
Doddsy allowed himself a smile at the last remark, ringing as it did with middle-class disgust. No doubt he’d find out the speaker was a retired teacher or a banker, a lawyer or a civil engineer who was getting back to nature for the summer. However frustrating he found Storm and Raven’s obstinate refusal to play by the rules of the world in which they lived, at least they were true to themselves. He respected them for that. He got out his notebook.
‘I’m pretty sure my mother doesn’t want to talk about what she found.’ Geri Foster’s voice was laced through with impatience.
‘You found her too,’ Raven said, with unexpected empowerment, but she said it into the mug of tea as though she hoped no-one would hear her.
‘I bumped into you on the path by the girl’s bike. You were the one who insisted on going down there. God knows why. You should be resting.’
‘Yes, but it was because—’
‘Okay.’ Doddsy cleared his throat and addressed himself to Geri, who seemed the one he was most likely to get some sense out of. ‘Geri Foster, is that right? Were you with your mum when she found the body? Can you talk me through what happened?’
‘How did you know who I am?’ she demanded. ‘I suppose your boss told you. We met.’
Geri was the type who was once seen and never forgotten, even for someone not trained to observe. ‘That’s right.’ He gave her a genial smile, sensing she was already on the defensive.
‘Nice to know you’re all on the ball.’ She swung the dog lead in her hand. ‘There’s not a lot to tell. I came up here to walk the dog.’
‘You’re an early riser?’
‘Oh God, yes. I always have been. It’s my upbringing.’ The look she tossed to her parents verged on contempt. ‘We always got up with the dawn and I’ve never been able to reset my body clock. Josh — my son — got up about before sunrise, I think, to go for a run. He keeps abnormal hours, too. I’m supposed to be working while I’m up here, but I knew Mum and Dad would be up and about so I thought I’d bring Burma up here for a walk and pop in and see them.’
‘Where are you staying?’
‘Over at Eden Lacy.’ She gave him an address, and gestured across the river. ‘It’s a holiday home, really. I bought it a few years back. I’me here most summers but this time I came as soon as Mum asked me to come up.’
Storm, Doddsy noticed, was looking at his feet.
‘It was very good of you.’ Raven lifted her head from her mug. ‘But you didn’t have to.’
‘Mum. I’m tal
king to DI Dodd. The sooner he goes, the sooner you can forget about it.’ She turned her attention back to Doddsy. ‘I came along here about a quarter to six, I think it was, and I could see Mum down on the path. I didn’t come into the field. I went down past Long Meg and she was looking at this bicycle.’
‘It wasn’t there last night,’ Raven whispered. ‘I went to look.’
Went to look. Doddsy starred that in his notes, but carried on. Strictly speaking he should be interviewing each of them separately but Storm and Raven’s serene refusal to acknowledge the rules sent all procedure and formality out of the window. ‘Why did you do that?’
‘Ever since that poor young man died last week I’ve been down every evening to make sure there was no-one else. I worry about the girl I saw there last week, the one in black. She comes here on a bicycle, you know, and I thought it might be hers. It’s the same colour.’ She shook herself. Storm twitched the blanket over her knees.
‘What time did you go down there last night?’ Doddsy asked, though asking Storm and Raven the time was pointless, since neither of them wore a watch or cared what day of the week it was.
‘Before dark. When I saw there was no-one about I came back up. The sun had just set.’
That would have put it just before eight o’clock. The bike, Doddsy had noticed, had had lights on it. ‘And this morning?’
‘I woke up so I got up,’ said Raven, as though everything were that simple.
‘I came along here at six. Just before, in fact. Five to, it must have been, because I thought about waiting in the car for the six o’clock news and decided not to bother. It was only just starting to get light. I parked up at Long Meg and then I saw Mum and went down to join her.’
‘I’d seen the bicycle,’ Raven said with another shiver, ‘and I just knew the worst had happened. Then Indigo came along—’
‘That’s me,’ Geri said, with an over-obvious sigh. ‘She calls me Indigo.’
Both her parents turned to her. ‘It’s because it’s your name!’ Storm said, in exasperation.
She shrugged again. ‘I changed my name, Inspector. However. To go on with the story. I found Mum standing next to the bicycle.’
‘I hadn’t touched it,’ Raven said, as if proud of having remembered this detail of procedure.
‘And I didn’t touch it either. Mum was all wound up, so I put Burma back on the lead and tied her up to a tree so we wouldn’t disturb anything, and we went in through the gap in the trees where the bike was parked. It’s not so much a path — more of a sort of animal track. Badgers, maybe? Anyway, it was getting light by then, so we followed it. And we found the poor girl. We came straight back out and I called for help, obviously. And that’s all there is. Your lot were quick getting here, I’ll say that for you.’
‘It’s not quite all there is.’ Raven didn’t meet Doddsy’s eye. ‘I did get up last night. After dark. I couldn’t sleep. I thought I saw lights in the woods.’
‘Lights?’ Doddsy questioned.
‘You never told me that.’ Aggrieved, Geri shifted her way in front of Doddsy, to the point at which he had to intervene. ‘Mrs Foster. If you don’t mind—’
‘It’s Ms Foster. If you don’t mind.’
‘Ms Foster. If you don’t mind, may I carry on questioning your mother?’ Jude would have stopped Geri with a look and Faye Scanlon with a sharp word, but Doddsy knew no way other than courtesy and in the end it always worked. It did so again, though not seamlessly. Geri harrumphed a little before she stepped back.
‘I wasn’t quite sure. I was very tired, yet somehow I couldn’t sleep. We go to bed with the sun, as you know. I don’t know how long it was. Maybe an hour?’ She shook her head, all doubt. ‘I got up and came out of the tent. Such a beautiful, clear night! I stood in the middle of the stone circle to feed off its energy, and I looked up at the stars. Then I thought I saw lights in the woods. Two of them. But I wasn’t sure. I thought I must be imagining it.’
‘Well, of course you were imagining it! Honestly, Mum.’
Raven dashed a tear from her eye. ‘Maybe. I wish I hadn’t gone back to bed. That poor girl. It wasn’t her time.’
‘And what would you have done?’ demanded her daughter.
‘I might have been able to save her.’
‘Some people can’t be saved, you know? Some don’t deserve it. You need to look after yourself.’
‘That’s enough, Indigo!’ It took a lot to rouse Storm to anger. Raven was shaking; he placed a large, calloused hand on her thin shoulder.
‘Thanks very much,’ Doddsy said to her, as gently as he could to make up for the treatment she was receiving from her daughter. ‘I’m going to get a note typed up and brought back over for you to sign. You too, Ms Foster, if that’s okay.’
‘Oh, of course.’ Geri fidgeted a little, looked at her watch. ‘God, that’s after eight o’clock. I’d better get back. Some of us have work to do, you know. Just because I’m not in an office doesn’t mean I can afford to waste time hanging around. Mum and Dad will give you my number.’
‘But Indigo, we don’t know—’
‘Oh, fine.’ Geri turned back, gave Doddsy her contact details with bad grace, then whistled for Burma and the two of them loped off back through the field and out of sight.
Raven and Storm exchanged glances, Storm gave Doddsy a helpless look, and Doddsy, feeling as discombobulated as he always did when dealing with these innocents, turned his attention to the women in the camper van.
Twelve
‘She had no phone on her,’ Doddsy said, to his audience of Jude, Ashleigh and Chris as they clustered around the table in the conference room that had become their dedicated meeting space, an incident room for a slow-burning investigation with no evidence of crime. ‘It’s probably in the river. The water’s quite low, and I’ve had people looking for it, but nothing so far.’
‘Low, maybe. The flow can be quite swift there. It could be well away by now.’ Jude looked up at the photographs on the board, at the array of young people who should have been in the news for all the right reasons, the things they’d achieved or hoped to achieve. There was a new face up there — Clara Beaton, a young woman who’d been unable to take the pressure of university, dropped out and died of hypothermia at the start of the previous year, after overdosing on vodka and painkillers in Cave Wood.
Cave Wood. Jude had no belief in the spirit world, but he wasn’t so foolish as to think everyone else was so hard-headed. It wasn’t hard to see how the place might exert a draw on a certain type of mind. Even Raven had talked about its energy.
But Clara Beaton was a closed case, death by misadventure, a suicide attempt signed off by the brutal cold of a winter’s night. Juliet Kennedy’s death, which might be suicide, was complex, open and attracting unwelcome attention. The national media hadn’t picked it up, or if they had they were acting responsibly and staying silent. Now, in an an attempt to dampen down the rising tide of concern throughout the district, the local news outlets were giving this latest victim no more than a name and half a column inch. The body found in Cave Wood has been identified as 16 year old Juliet Kennedy, who was known to suffer from a heart condition. Police say the death remains unexplained.
It hadn’t taken two days waiting for the post mortem to know the underlying heart condition hadn’t killed her. Hanging had killed her. Now they had the official confirmation, the statements from her family and friends, the results from Tammy’s investigation and everything available to them except the forensic tests on the bike, and he didn’t expect anything startling from that. There was no evidence to suggest anyone other than the dead girl had been involved. He sat back and waited to see what everyone else had to say.
‘What do we think?’ Ashleigh shook her head. ‘Social media too much for her? Or something she read there that upset her? And if so, is that criminal?’
‘If we find the phone, the sim card will be pretty useless,’ said Doddsy, with a sigh, ‘and the way kids work these
days, there’s every chance she’d be using WhatsApp and it’ll all be encrypted anyway. But it would be good if we can find it and follow it up.’
Even before Doddsy had finished allowing his optimistic nature to assert itself, Jude was shaking his head. Accessing the messages on Juliet Kennedy’s phone was possible but it wasn’t simple. There was a case that would have to be made for it, forms to be filled in, resources allocated. ‘Sorry. I don’t think I could get it past Faye.’
‘Surely with four deaths—’
‘Five,’ Jude corrected him, ‘if we include Clara Beaton.’ Which he was inclined to think they should, and so it made a difference. The odds on rolling the same number on a die five times running were, he knew, one in over seven thousand seven hundred. It might be an irrelevance to the case, but it kept him to the point. Every time it happened it increased the chances of a connection. ‘I’ve requested a report of caller usage for Juliet’s phone, and for the others.’ That would tell them who the dead young people had called, and who had called them, but no more. ‘But unless and until we can demonstrate a crime has been committed, or might be committed, there’s nothing we can do.’
‘But the blogs—’
‘I’ve already had the conversation with Faye about Eden Whispers.’ Jude did the maths in his head. God forbid it happened, but where would a sixth death take them? Odds of almost fifty thousand to one. Impossible. ‘She reckons there’s nothing explicit enough. Not that we can identify it as a crime.’
‘If it’s encouraging or assisting suicide, we don’t need to prove they knew who they were targeting, or that they were targeting anyone.’
‘I know that.’ But the blog had nevertheless been delicately vague. He’d spent the evening reading it after he’d left Mikey, the very day that Juliet had strung herself from the oak tree in Cave Wood. Three recent blog posts had caught his notice — the one on the Eden Valley suicides, another on the growth of the social media menace with links to websites which contained, in his view, questionable content, and a third on famous suicides, almost exactly echoing the Werther Effect that Vanessa had talked about.
